The powder metallurgical process known as “press and sinter” involves compressing metal powder to obtain a component of the desired shape. The whole component is then placed in a furnace at a sintering temperature below the melting temperature of the metal. The powder particles join or fuse during sintering. The furnace sintering operation may be necessary for the components produced by conventional methods to be useful in any engineering application because the green (unsintered) density of the components is low enough that they can break with little or no force, or due to mishandling. In the conventional method, the component is machined after the whole component is sintered. The double press and sinter technique, as opposed to the single press and sinter technique, involves compacting (pressing) the metal powder to produce a green compact, presintering the green compact at a temperature below the final sintering temperature, repressing, and sintering. The double press technique can achieve a slightly higher density than the single press technique.
The dynamic magnetic compaction (DMC) technique can produce components with higher green density and higher performance than those produced by conventional press and sinter techniques. The DMC method applies pressures generated by non-contact electromagnetic forces to compact powder-like and/or particulate materials into high density bodies.